BROKEN BLOOD

Chapter One: The First Crack

The thing about family barbecues is that everyone smiles for exactly as long as it takes to get the photo, and then the masks slip right back into place the second the phone goes back in someone's pocket.

I watched mine slip about four beers in.

"You gonna eat that or just stare at it?" Angel's voice pulled me back, her hand warm on my forearm, wedding ring catching the last orange light of the evening. My wife had a way of grounding me without even trying — five years married and she still knew when my head had wandered off somewhere she couldn't follow.

"Just thinking," I said, and it wasn't a lie. I'd been thinking a lot lately. Thinking about the way my brother's eyes tracked Paige across every room she walked into. Thinking about how Dustin's wife Sarah looked more tired every time I saw her, like she was carrying something she didn't have words for yet. Thinking about things I didn't want to be thinking about, because once you start pulling a thread like that, you don't get to stop until the whole sweater's unraveled.

My father's backyard was doing its usual summer performance — string lights, the smell of charcoal, my dad Henry manning the grill like it was a religious ceremony, Julie floating around with a pitcher of sangria refilling glasses nobody asked her to refill. Normal. Everything about it screamed normal.

Except.

Except for the way Paige had laughed at something Dustin said twenty minutes ago — too long, too easy, her hand landing on his arm and staying there three seconds past what siblings do. Except for the way Dustin's eyes had found mine right after, guilty and quick, like he'd been caught at something even though nothing had technically happened in front of anyone.

Except for the fact that I'd been quietly collecting these moments for the better part of a year now, filing them away in some drawer in the back of my mind I wasn't ready to open.

"Blake." Angel again, softer this time. "You've been somewhere else all night."

"Sorry, baby." I kissed her temple, breathed in the coconut smell of her shampoo, tried to let it anchor me the way it always did. "Long week. Work stuff."

She didn't push. She never did — that was the thing about Angel, she gave me room to be quiet when I needed it, trusted that I'd come to her when I was ready. I loved her for that. I loved her, period, uncomplicated and real, the kind of love that didn't need to prove itself with drama. Which was exactly why what was crawling around in my chest right now felt so wrong.

Because it wasn't really about Dustin.

It was about her.

Paige had grown up in this family the way a stray cat grows up on your porch — technically not yours, but you feed her enough times and eventually she just belongs. Henry married Julie when I was fourteen, Dustin sixteen, and Paige twelve, and from that day on she was just there, a permanent fixture, family in every sense that mattered except blood. I'd never thought of her as a sister exactly — too much time had passed by the point she showed up for that bond to calcify the way it does with people you've known since birth. She was just... Paige. The girl who did shots with us at Dustin's bachelor party. The girl who called me at 2 a.m. once, crying about some guy, and I'd stayed on the phone with her for three hours because that's what you do for family.

The girl who, right now, was walking toward the drink table wearing a sundress that had no business existing in a backyard full of people who'd known her since she was a kid, laughing at nothing, her dark hair catching the string lights, and I hated — hated— the way my whole body turned toward her like a compass finding north.

"Blake, can you grab the tongs from inside?" Henry called from the grill, and I used the excuse to put distance between myself and my own thoughts.

The kitchen was cooler, dimmer, mercifully empty. I found the tongs on the counter and was halfway back to the door when I heard voices from the hallway — low, urgent, the specific register people use when they think walls are thicker than they are.

"—can't keep doing this here, Dustin, his dad is right outside—"

"I know. I know, okay? I just needed five minutes where I wasn't performing for everyone."

"That's not fair to Sarah."

"Don't." His voice cracked on the word. "Don't say her name right now."

I stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, tongs hanging useless in my hand, and something in my chest went very cold and very still, the way water goes right before it turns to ice.

Because I recognized that hallway. It led to the downstairs bathroom, and past that, the little reading nook Julie had turned into a home office nobody used.

And I recognized the shape of the two people standing in the shadow of it, close enough that there was no space left between them at all — my brother's hand cupping the side of Paige's face like it was something he'd done a hundred times before, like his fingers already knew the exact geography of her jaw.

I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I watched my brother lean in and kiss the woman I'd apparently been in some kind of denial about loving for longer than I wanted to admit, and I felt two entirely different kinds of sick crash into each other in my stomach — the sick of betrayal, watching Dustin do this to Sarah, to our family, to the whole fragile architecture of trust that held us all together —

And underneath that, quieter, uglier, a sick I didn't want to name.

Jealousy.

Not for Sarah's sake. Not even really for Dustin's.

For mine.

They broke apart before either of them saw me, Paige straightening her dress with hands that were shaking just slightly, Dustin running his fingers through his hair like he could physically comb the guilt out of himself. I backed away from the doorway silent as smoke, my heart going so hard I could feel it in my teeth, and by the time I walked back out into the backyard with those goddamn tongs, my face had rearranged itself into something that could pass for normal.

"Took you long enough," Henry said, not even looking up from the grill.

"Couldn't find them," I said, handing them over, and my voice came out steady in a way that surprised me, given that everything underneath it had just quietly caught fire.

Angel smiled at me from across the yard, waved me back over to our lawn chairs, and I smiled back like a man with nothing at all sitting heavy behind his ribs.

But my eyes found Paige again — she'd rejoined the party, glass of sangria in hand, laughing at something Julie said, playing her part flawlessly — and this time when she looked up and caught me watching her, something passed between us. A current. A recognition.

She didn't know what I'd seen.

But she knew I was looking at her differently now.

And God help me, I didn't look away.